Dead Fish
by Mysticc
Summary: Shawshank Redemption AU. Disregards the novella. Joe Hastings is a young man sent to rot in Shawshank for a crime he did not commit. Adjusting to life on the inside, he falls into a group led by a man called Red and develops friendships that last through the years, especially with Andy Dufresne. All the while, the story behind his imprisonment unravels.
1. Fresh Fish, 1954

The slap of cold metal on his wrists. The night inside a cell. The sweat from a dream in which he'd ended up dying in such a room. The night pressing until he choked under the weight of tears. A glaucoma of all the colors in the world.

He is longer Joe Hastings, but a shadowed face split by cell bars. His kiss goodbye was the slam of the judge's gavel.

* * *

His hands are cuffed. His back's stuck to a bus seat. There's dark patches beneath his arms and his fingers are interlaced like a prayer. Joe takes a deep breath, but the pit in his stomach only worsens. The air smells acrid. His right eye still twitches from last night.

The potbellied man commanding the wheel wears sunglasses that inhale the road. The smacking sound of his chewing tobacco carries to the very back.

A dozen men are seated and cuffed as well. Their eyes hold largely nervous looks that sometimes flit between resignation and fear, as if they are toying with the unknown life that has been thrust upon them. There are two exceptions: a man stares emptily at the distant grass, and another smiles to himself, like this is all just one big hoot.

People, Joe guesses, have different ways of navigating their ruin.

He takes a deep breath and tries to relax himself, then takes in the view of the field whirring by, swift in its vanishing act. Maine is pretty this time of the year, unfathomably green, bristling with subtle winds he wishes to smell and feel, to slip away inside and become part of, invisible and far-reaching. Free.

This'll be the last time you see it, another voice in his head echoes.

Joe doesn't argue.

Down the rounding drive, on a platform high above, moving dots are stark against the sky: officers wielding oil-black guns. They steady their eyes like crosshairs on the short annex of high chain-link fences leading into the yard. Men in prison getup begin to crowd the perimeter, their eyes eager, their lips pulled back into sneers. Their fingers curl around the diamond shapes drawn from the metal and they press their noses to it to see better.

The bus moves through the opening gates slowly and stalls before a formation of officers lined shoulder-to-shoulder at the end. Clad in black, stony-faced, it is easy to mistake them for Death's accomplices. Silver badges shine dully from their chests, assuring the location: SHAWSHANK STATE PENITENTIARY.

The tallest one crosses to the vehicle as its doors fold open and reaches in, pulling out the first soul his hand could grasp. He studies the face of the sturdy fellow, whose eyes won't budge from his shoes, and tells him to follow a different officer to the looming building ahead. The fellow's steps tug along the rest, all of them guided by a shared ankle chain.

Joe is the last to leave the bus. As he steps off, he becomes closely acquainted with the unforgiving face of the tall, glaring officer. The man is immobile, and yet he manages chew Joe up and spit him out before he's forced ahead by the chain biting his ankle, choking back tears in fear he'll paint himself the biggest target of the group.

The surrounding prisoners are not so different from lions who've caught sight of bloody meat.

The clattering of the fences sounds like loose change rattling around in his skull, and as the length of the fence ends—as they tread across open ground—heat scales Joe's spine and floods his face as he imagines them overrunning the procession. He imagines the guards standing back, their guns left untouched and their eyes watching, either biting back laughter or letting it all out.

But a P.A. system tells the old souls to head in for evening count, and the men disperse, tossing evil smiles their way. Smiles for the "fresh fish", as they've been frantically shouting for the past moment, to dwell on as they're led into a half-lit hall for the inauguration.

* * *

Chalk dust: that is what Joe is reminded of when the officer throws up a scoop of white powder. The stuff collides with his naked backside and sticks to the surface of him. The rest disperses, clouding the air like smoke, twisting away in the shafts of darkening light.

He coughs, still shivering from the cold water they sprayed not long ago. His blond hair is flat against his skull, dripping into his eyes.

"Turn," a voice dictates, mechanical-toned.

He does so, and another scoop of white power hits him in the face mainly, falling down his front. More clouds, more coughing. His skin stings.

"Move out," the voice comes again, and a cloth is lazily pressed to his face. Joe takes it in his own hands, rubs, then cups himself, padding out of the cage.

Further along, he's equipped with an itchy bundle of sheets and clothes. A toothbrush pokes out from the side, a pathetic little thing. Joe wonders if he could be described the same way.

The new lot—powdered white, teeth chattering, naked—look very much like sugared treats cast into a ravenous arena as they're led into the cell block. In the gauzy dark, without time to dress, they climb cold stairs, their eyes shuttered for fear of striking a wrong nerve or enticing ridicule. Without a shred of dignity, without even a second to make sense of anything.

Joe follows the tangent he was directed to, going up the levels, nearly reaching the top before he gets to an empty cell that is supposed to be his. It is and it isn't. He sets his bundle down on the cot, holed up in mossy darkness, flushed with dingy colors and faint piss-yellow light from the bulb hanging overhead. Home sweet home.

He dresses quickly, tripping some as he wrestles his short legs into jeans. He is eager to protect himself, hiding skin away as if hungry eyes lurk in a corner, and who is there to detest this? He's heard enough stories about prison, and none of them were fairy tales.

A bit of water from the sink clears the delousing powder from his face, and a quick swipe of the tongue across his lips tells him they're dried out and crumbling. His eyes feel swollen, tears frozen in his numb disbelief pressing behind them.

The shadows take all kinds of shapes, and an old fear of the dark is magnified.

Joe settles on his bed and breathes in. There's a musty smell. He doesn't know how to describe it, not exactly. Everything is new and confusing. And nothing is good, of course.

Somewhere, there is the faint drip of water. How unexpected! he thinks.

But after a while it is no longer a mere sound, braiding with his thoughts. Inescapable. An inwrought mockery in its endless cascade.

Sleep finds him unexpectedly, thankfully, and his mind revels in images scattered throughout his twenty-one-year-old life.

...A baseball game on the fringes of some empty lot. The older boys laced around the fence rooted for his ten-year-old self after an unexpected hit had set the ball on a path to the stratosphere. Their voices frenzied as he just stood there, astonished, his eyes caught by the swallowing sky: "Run, dumbass! Run run run!"...

...A small moment during a Sunday morning at church, a moment wherein the clouds parted above the building and shed a stream of light that goldened his face, a holy sun playing in the windows...

...A kiss enveloped in shadow, the glint of two smiles. Her name is still sweet on his lips...

Joe lives them all a second time before a deeper wave of sleep leaves him a thoughtless shell. Time passes, but not fast enough.

In the cell next to his, almost lost in the silence, there's sniffling: a fish cries.

* * *

Morning comes, tinging everything with pale light. The windows bleed dawn.

Joe stirs from his place against the wall, his mouth numb and his eyes raw from the night, the world around rebuilding itself as he staggers out of a lethargic fog.

Seeing the vertical shafts of steel and the half-uniform he adorns, he regrets to have opened his eyes again. Despite his wits, he had embraced the cliché that his falling asleep in this cell was the finale of an elaborate and alarmingly vivid nightmare in which he had gone to prison. Nope, he thinks, this is real. This is too fucking real.

Later, others wake. They pull sheets from their bodies, cots squealing from the movement. Prisoners bathed in hushed blues dress silently.

Joe walks to the sink and splashes water in his face before grabbing the toothbrush. He would feel normal if it weren't for his surroundings, of course. This is, to an obvious degree, like getting ready for school or work.

Then he pushes the thought from his mind. Am I really trying to normalize the situation?

He doesn't know how the conditions are around here, but it being prison, he's smart enough to deny any comforting projections. Will he be lugging enormous rocks in the yard until his bones crumble? Will he boil beneath a blazing sun, swinging a pickaxe at the soil for hours? Finished, he strikes the facet shut and crosses to his bed, waiting for whatever there is to come.

What comes is this: a sudden alarm that shatters the morning. The bars of his cell slide away with an ancient grind, allowing departure. Across the room, men on every level appear from the gloom of their units, standing stoically in view. Joe follows suit.

Below on the ground floor, officers take count until satisfied. There are five, and their black caps draw in light and drown it. The one called Hadley is among them like a secret blade, eyeing the levels with disdain.

"Okay, move it," booms the squat one whose cap is very nearly his whole head. This sets in motion a game of Follow the Leader down the stairs, albeit with armed and spiteful observers.

Joe tries matching his steps to the march thundering in his ears.


	2. A Man Called Red

Joe's mother is a wonderful cook. The simplest dinner could attract a crowd of thousands, surely.

So there is an unfortunate comparison to be made when grey oatmeal hits his tray. Without protest—should he have expected better?—Joe removes himself from the breakfast line and scans the mess hall for a suitable place to sit.

But the search is fruitless; between the bobbing heads of men lost in conversation, there are no shaded seats in which he can disappear. Standing at the head of the mess hall, visible to all, he feels whatever invisibility he has managed swiftly flaking away.

Joe wades through the sea of prisoners to the best candidate and sets his tray on the table, his eyes affixed to the unappealing breakfast should a harmless, aimless glance cause any trouble.

* * *

Joe's capacity for labor has been made exclusive to the laundry room, where must thickened by moisture pervades the air.

And you're forced to breathe it in without mercy, for the room is saturated with men working in what is nearly the same oppressive heat of a July afternoon.

Though there is nothing but the steam and the smell and the orders given for more supplies and the whir of machines and the dampness of shirts, Joe cannot complain. Not thoroughly, at least.

Because he needs the stimulation, anything to get him through the silent duty of his hands sorting through the dirty clothes of men he has yet to know.

Without it, there is room for shadows to grow in the mind.

* * *

You know what Joe needs? It's not something obvious, like an actual, comfortable bed or clothes that aren't uniforms.

No, what he really needs is a cigarette.

He had his first smoke when he was ten. The older boys had him tag along after that grand slam of his stole away the whole baseball game.

Their bikes screamed through the town streets before coming to a collective rest in the alley behind the soda shop, and soon one of them drew out a pack of Lucky Strikes that made its way around the huddle. Every boy took one immediately, until the carton came before young Joe.

He paused but he was not nervous. Rather, he acknowledged, despite his young age, that right then, while he was among a group of boys he had no business being around, the act of smoking was made symbolic, so much bigger than the moment.

The boy holding the carton shook it some and the rattling brought Joe back to his skin, where he promptly reached in and took out a Lucky Strike, lighting it with the matches that were going around next.

And so there he was, behind the soda shop, surrounded by Jimmy, David, Alden, Todd, and Buzz as he sucked down a cigarette for the first time.

He remembers feeling the air crush in his lungs, remembers coughing for a spell and even the bird that took flight from the sound of it. He remembers the older boys laughing as they watched, and how they put him to shame as they smoked without effort, breathing out clouds that assumed all kinds of shapes against the purpling sky.

They gave him the rest of the pack, and Joe had intended on keeping it as a souvenir.

But days passed, and he would later show off all the smoke clouds he could make to his friend Ritchie, who wasn't really his friend but they would talk and kick cans some, being the neighborhood outcasts, and that counted as something.

Ritchie was a near-sighted boy with a portly shape about him, a sheltered kid who still clung to his mother's arm. And so the boy would watch in wordless admiration as Joe finished a smoke and stamped it out on the ground.

Ritchie would stare at it for a while, choked by the smell but so lost in how cool it had once looked. So supremely cool.

What happened to that kid? Joe couldn't tell you.

Soon the performances were edged out by habit. Then preoccupation became dependence, and now his fingers ache to feel a cigarette nestled between them.

God—he must really be going crazy, because the smell of one rides the faint brush of wind that just now sweeps across the prison. It's faint but it's there, so subtle you have to scratch for it.

Now Joe's scanning the yard, his fingers flexing, his mouth partly opened, and he doesn't mind for this one moment that he may resemble a stumbling fool. I practically am one, he thinks.

He has a short time about finding the man whose cigarette smoke is reeling him in from the yard like a fish from the ocean. The man is nearly bald and incredibly thin, so much so that his shoulders barely hang the shirt they all wear, it just droops from him like a poncho would.

As the man stands on the fringe, he takes deep, selfish drags and expels them over the heads of the masses. It looks as if a cartoon steamboat rests on his tongue.

Joe watches his shoes take steps he cannot feel, then stops in his tracks. He needs a quick moment to stifle the nervous feeling that overheats him, that locks his jaws together.

Finally, miraculously, the sick feeling passes and he is near enough to say, "Excuse me."

The man looks at him, smoke slipping past his eyes. "What the fuck do you want, new fish?"

"I was wondering where you got that?" He points feebly at the cigarette, being awfully bold for a fish. "Uh, could you—could you spare me one?"

"You must be outta your goddamn mind if you think I'm gon'!" the man says, incredulous. His cheeks flush red and a vein appears like a zipper in the middle of his forehead.

Naturally, Joe freezes.

"The fuck do I look like, a fucking Sears? You want this—" the man holds up the cigarette to Joe's face like fish bait "—you want anything, you go to Red, not me."

"Red?" Questions swirl in Joe's mind for the faintest moment until the man, growing ever impatient with his presence, points out the only dark-skinned fellow among a group of men on the other side of the yard, all of them gathered in the shade of the wall they lean against.

"That guy there. Now leave me the fuck alone."

* * *

"Red?" says Joe again.

But this time he stands in one of Shawshank's shadows, facing the man who had been pointed out to him. The man whose face is all deep lines, faint whiskers, black skin, and dark hair hidden beneath a prison cap; the man whose eyes are now focusing on him, twinkling even in the scant light. The man they call Red, for whatever reason.

The others regard Joe with what he figures is protective concern, but it would probably be more accurate to call it hostility. Whichever way you frame it.

But the man called Red waves it off and tells them it's fine, and most of them scatter into the yard, eyeing Joe strangely. The only one who has stayed behind is short, and plump, and Joe can see himself reflected in his glasses.

"What can I do for you, fish?" The man called Red says this so smoothly, removed of the hostile nature that seems to seep from every look and line of dialogue Joe's received thus far. He is taken aback, if not immediately grateful.

"I've been told you're the man to go to for…" Joe looks around, suddenly feeling a chill traipse the length of his spine like cold fingers. "...items of various purpose."

The man called Red smiles. "Hell, the way you looking around, you're too sketchy for business."

This coaxes a small laugh from Joe, which is another surprise. You know how laughter has a certain easing effect to it? It is like a balloon rising from a dark pit. "No, no, I'm fixing to buy a pack of smokes, is all."

"I don't sell razors or shit like that, I'm telling you now."

Joe shakes his head. "No need to. My purchase is strictly tobacco, I assure you. Haven't smoked one in months, but I figure it's a pretty smallfuckup compared to this." He gestures to the walls, the guards; the entirety of their reduced existence.

"Microscopic," corrects Glasses.

Joe nods in agreement, then figures proper introductions are in order. "Name's Joe Hastings."

Glasses takes on an observing silence, but Red replies, "You can call me Red."

"If you don't mind, I'll say that's an unusual nickname."

"Not if you're Irish. Now, if you don't mind me asking, what's a kid like you doing in a shithole like this?"

"Well, Red, I'm afraid you're asking the wrong person."

"Oh yeah? How you come to figure that?"

"I didn't do it," Joe says, though the words had felt like stones in his stomach. "I'm innocent."

There is a peculiar moment of quiet until the two men before him start to crack up. Glasses manages, "Innocent, the guy says. Innocent."

"Yes," says Joe, and it would be wrong to say that there aren't shreds of anger cutting at his composure. "I'm innocent, I don't belong here."

"I don't know," says Red, "you sure do fit right in. Damn near everybody in here's just about innocent."

"How do you mean?"

"You'll find out yourself, just ask around."

Joe throws up his hands. "If you don't believe me, that's fine. I'm sure I can take my business elsewhere."

"No need to get fussy, now," says Red, attitude changing. "You're in here, everything's out there, and that's how it's gonna be for some time. How long you got?"

"Twenty-five years," Joe answers, his voice laced with a subtle acid. "I wouldn't be so wrong to say that's an awful long time away from everything, would I?"

"Try a life sentence. Then you wouldn't have to wonder about anything."

Silence. The heavy, settling type.

"How much does a pack of Luckies go for?" Joe inquires.

"Twenty-five cents," Red answers, "but I charge a twenty percent markup, you'll understand."

"Alright, then." Joe extends a hand, but Red places both of his on top of it, quickly guiding it back to Joe's side while looking about the yard.

"Jesus, could you be any more obvious?" Glasses crosses his arms in front of his chest and leans back even further into the wall, so much so that Joe imagines him falling right through.


End file.
